A new HuffPost analysis confirms that Donald Trump has billed taxpayers more than $101 million for his personal golf habit since January 2025 — on a trajectory toward $300 million by term’s end — even as 4.3 million Americans have lost access to federal food assistance under his watch. This is not a story about leisure. It is a story about who pays, and who plays.
In the opening months of his second term, President Donald Trump made a solemn promise that he had already broken a thousand times over: that he would be too busy, too devoted, too consumed by the hard work of governing to ever find time for golf. He made this pledge on the campaign trail in 2016, repeated it in 2024, and has spent every waking weekend since his January 2025 inauguration making a mockery of it — one $3.4 million Mar-a-Lago trip at a time.
A detailed analysis published by HuffPost in late March 2026 has now confirmed what watchdog organizations and Democratic lawmakers have been warning about for over a year: the taxpayer-funded cost of Trump’s golf habit has crossed $101.2 million since his return to office. In the same period, his administration has stripped 4.3 million Americans of food assistance, slashed programs that feed children and seniors, and delivered the most dramatic upward redistribution of wealth in modern legislative history. The numbers do not simply speak for themselves — they indict.
1. The Price of a Hobby
The mechanics of Trump’s golf expenditures are staggering in their granularity. According to the HuffPost analysis, which used methodology drawn from a 2019 Government Accountability Office report on Trump’s first-term travel, each trip to Mar-a-Lago — just to get there and back, to secure the waterways, to fly the motorcade in on C-17 cargo aircraft — costs the American public $3.4 million. Every single time. His eight trips to Bedminster, New Jersey, run approximately $1.1 million each. His five visits to the Doral resort in Florida cost $2.7 million apiece. And the crown jewel of his second-term golfing portfolio — a trip to Scotland for the opening of his new course at Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen — consumed nearly $9.7 million of public money to market a private business.
The primary cost drivers have not diminished since his first term. Air Force One, the modified Boeing 747 Trump insists on flying to Florida rather than using cheaper alternatives, costs $273,063 per hour to operate, as the GAO documented. The Coast Guard must deploy patrol vessels and a cutter to the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean flanking Mar-a-Lago on every visit. Military and federal law enforcement personnel accompany the motorcade on every outing. These are not the incidental costs of a president taking a weekend off. They are the compounding price of a systematic, documented pattern of choosing personal enrichment over public duty.
In travel and security expenses since January 2025 — already two-thirds of Trump’s entire first-term total, spent in roughly half the time. Source: HuffPost
More than one quarter of his presidency since January 20, 2025, spent on a golf course he personally owns. Source: HuffPost
On current pace, Trump will spend three times what he spent in his entire first term on taxpayer-funded golf excursions. Source: HuffPost
The cost to operate the president’s preferred Boeing 747 — vastly more than Obama’s trips to Joint Base Andrews or Biden’s use of Marine One. Source: 2019 GAO Report
Taxpayer money spent for Trump to promote the opening of his new private golf course at Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen, Scotland. Source: HuffPost
Americans stripped of federal food assistance between January 2025 and January 2026, the majority after Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Source: AP / FOX 5
2. The Promise He Made — and Broke
What makes Trump’s golfing not merely a policy failure but a moral one is the deception that preceded it. Throughout his 2015 and 2016 campaign, Trump built a defining contrast with President Barack Obama around the golf course. He tweeted about Obama’s golf outings more than two dozen times. He mocked Obama’s rounds at campaign rallies. He promised voters that if elected, he would be different.
“Because I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go play golf. Believe me. Believe me, folks.”
— Donald Trump, campaign rally, August 2016, as reported by CNN
The contrast with Obama, as HuffPost documented, is not merely one of hypocrisy but of arithmetic. Obama played the overwhelming majority of his rounds at Joint Base Andrews, a short motorcade ride from the White House — a fraction of the cost. Biden used a smaller aircraft to reach his Delaware home. Trump insists on the full presidential treatment: the 747, the C-17s, the motorcade, the Coast Guard patrols — all to reach a resort he owns, where his stay directly benefits his personal finances. The hypocrisy is not incidental. It is the architecture of the grift.
Jordan Libowitz of the nonpartisan watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) stated plainly that the president has “burned through over $100 million in taxpayer money in order to make promotional appearances at his golf courses and hobnob with millionaires and billionaires” — all while gas prices spike and the affordability crisis deepens for working Americans.
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3. While He Golfs, Millions Go Hungry
The $101.2 million spent on Trump’s golf habit does not exist in a fiscal vacuum. It arrives alongside — and in direct ideological contrast to — the most severe rollback of federal food assistance in a generation. On July 4, 2025, Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” also designated H.R. 1, into law. The Congressional Budget Office projected the law would slash $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over ten years — a 20 percent reduction in federal SNAP spending — and remove approximately 2.4 million people from the program in an average month between 2025 and 2034.
That projection has, in fact, been dramatically exceeded. According to the Food Research and Action Center, SNAP participation stood at approximately 42.83 million when Trump was inaugurated. By January 2026, it had fallen to 38.55 million — a loss of 4.3 million participants, the majority occurring in the second half of 2025 after the bill’s passage. Nearly 40 percent of SNAP participants are children. Twenty percent are older adults. More than three-quarters live at or below the federal poverty line.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins greeted this mass loss of food access with celebration, posting on social media that there were now “4.3 million off SNAP and counting!” — citing this as evidence of economic recovery. Researchers rejected the claim immediately. Caitlin Caspi, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut who studies food insecurity, told the Associated Press there is no evidence that economic improvement accounts for the decline. “We are not seeing, if you look at the unemployment rates, things that might be an indicator that a strong economy was driving this change,” Caspi said. The unemployment rate, in fact, is currently higher than when Trump took office.
“SNAP is a lifeline for working Americans nationwide. Now, that lifeline is being ripped away from millions because Republicans in Congress decided that giving tax breaks to billionaires and waging war are more important than protecting food for families.”
— Leor Tal, Campaign Director, Unrig Our Economy, via NationofChange
The Food Research and Action Center has documented that H.R. 1 simultaneously cut $186 billion in food assistance while delivering tax cuts worth more than $1.5 trillion to those with incomes above $500,000. One analysis found the law will reduce income for the poorest 20 percent of Americans by an average of 3.8 percent, while increasing income for the wealthiest 20 percent by 3.7 percent — a 7.5 percentage-point redistribution from the bottom to the top. And food prices continue to climb regardless: up 3.1 percent in 2025, with another 2.9 percent increase projected for 2026.
4. A Failure of Leadership by Any Measure
Consider the arithmetic of cruelty: a single Mar-a-Lago golf trip costs $3.4 million. The WIC program — which provides supplemental nutrition to pregnant women, infants, and young children — has been targeted for a $300 million cut in Trump’s FY2026 budget proposal, dropping from $7.597 billion to a proposed $7.306 billion. That cut in children’s nutrition funding is equivalent to fewer than 90 Mar-a-Lago golf trips. The Child Nutrition Programs that fund school meals face a $16 million reduction — less than five Mar-a-Lago weekends. The Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides critical nutrition for low-income seniors, faces outright elimination.
These are not abstract budgetary choices. They are decisions about who matters. A president who spends more than a quarter of his presidency on a golf course he owns — billing taxpayers $101.2 million for the privilege — while signing legislation that strips food assistance from 4.3 million Americans, the majority of them children and elderly, has provided a definitive answer to that question.
Trump is inaugurated for his second term. SNAP serves approximately 42.83 million Americans. Trump has pledged to cut government spending and “put America first.”
Trump’s golf tab passes $18 million after 13 days on the course in his first 48 days in office, according to a HuffPost analysis using GAO methodology.
The taxpayer golf bill crosses $26 million. Trump has spent more than a quarter of his 69 days in office on a golf course he personally owns.
Trump signs H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” into law. The CBO projects it will cut $186 billion from SNAP and remove 2.4 million people from the program per month over the following decade.
Golf costs reach nearly $71 million for the year. SNAP participation has begun to fall dramatically as H.R. 1 provisions take effect.
SNAP participation falls to 38.55 million — 4.3 million fewer Americans than when Trump took office, with researchers linking the decline directly to H.R. 1, not economic improvement.
HuffPost confirms Trump’s second-term golf tab has crossed $101.2 million — two-thirds of his entire first-term total, spent in barely half the time. He has now spent 110 days on a golf course.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins celebrates the 4.3 million Americans who have lost food assistance as a sign of economic health. Researchers reject the claim. The unemployment rate remains higher than it was on Inauguration Day.
5. Self-Enrichment as a Pattern of Governance
The corruption implicit in Trump’s golf expenditures is not merely fiscal — it is structural. When the president flies to his own resort at taxpayer expense, the federal government pays for lodging, security, and services at a property that deposits money directly into Trump’s personal accounts. Every Mar-a-Lago trip is, in the most literal sense, a transfer of public funds to a private business owned by the president of the United States. The Government Accountability Office has documented this mechanism. Watchdog groups like CREW have tracked it in exhaustive detail. And still the trips continue.
Republican consultant Rick Wilson, a vocal Trump critic, captured the corrosive effect of this normalization with candor: he told HuffPost that the $100 million golf figure would likely produce “a collective shrug” from a public that has grown so accustomed to Trump’s corruption that its scale no longer registers as scandal. That is perhaps the most damning indictment of all — not that a president spent $101 million on golf while millions of Americans went hungry, but that the machinery of accountability has been so thoroughly degraded that the revelation barely interrupts the news cycle.
When Dereliction of Duty Becomes a Constitutional Crisis
The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1967 in the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination, establishes a clear mechanism for addressing presidential incapacity. Section 4 — its most consequential and never-yet-invoked provision — allows the Vice President and a majority of the fifteen-member Cabinet to declare the president unable to discharge the duties of the office, triggering a transfer of power to the Vice President. Congress then has the authority to weigh in if the president contests the removal, requiring a two-thirds vote of both chambers to keep the president out of office. As Time magazine has documented, the amendment was designed precisely for moments when the executive branch is functionally absent — when the person holding the office is incapable of, or demonstrably uninterested in, faithfully executing its duties.
The case that Trump’s conduct meets that constitutional threshold has gained significant legislative momentum. Representative John Larson of Connecticut has filed articles of impeachment and explicitly called on the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, arguing that Trump is “unable or unwilling to faithfully execute the responsibilities of the office and he is putting the nation’s security and economy in jeopardy.” Representative Maxine Waters of California argued for invocation after Trump’s removal of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, stating the Cabinet must “determine his unfitness.” Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove stated simply: “He’s risking the safety of every American. Invoke the 25th.” More than 70 lawmakers, including a handful of senators, have now publicly called for invocation.
The nonpartisan governance organization Common Cause has issued a formal statement demanding the Cabinet act: “Donald Trump is unfit to serve as President of the United States. That’s not a matter of speculation, it’s a matter of public record — his incoherent statements and erratic behavior put our country at risk every day they’re allowed to continue.”
The constitutional argument is straightforward: a president who has spent more than one-quarter of his presidency on a personal golf course — billing taxpayers over $101 million for the privilege — while simultaneously dismantling the food security infrastructure that sustains tens of millions of Americans has not merely failed at leadership. He has abandoned it. The 25th Amendment does not require criminal conduct. It requires only an honest reckoning with whether the duties of the office are being faithfully executed. The golf scorecard answers that question with numbers.
The practical barriers are real and acknowledged. Vice President JD Vance has shown no inclination to act. The Cabinet was selected, as Common Cause noted, for loyalty rather than independence. A two-thirds vote in both chambers to sustain any removal would require Republican lawmakers to choose constitutional duty over tribal allegiance — a vote few have shown willingness to cast. But the International Bar Association has noted that the amendment’s mere invocation would force a political reckoning that the current Congress has studiously avoided. The barriers to invoking the 25th do not diminish the constitutional case for it. They simply measure the distance between the republic’s founding ideals and its present condition.
6. What Leadership Actually Looks Like
Leadership is, at its most fundamental, a declaration of priority. What a president does with his time — his most finite and unreplicable resource — is the most honest balance sheet of his values. A president who golfs 110 days out of his first 400 in office has told us precisely where his priorities lie. A president who signs legislation cutting food assistance for 4.3 million Americans while spending $101 million to maintain his weekend routine has answered every question about whose interests he serves.
Kate Bauer, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan, offered perhaps the most clarifying observation in the current debate over SNAP enrollment. “We have a persistent poverty problem in this country,” she told the Associated Press. “And we have huge economic disparities. And most people, even in good economic times, are not able to pull their families out of poverty.” This is the reality against which Trump’s golf expenditures must be measured — not against Obama’s rounds at Andrews, not against Biden’s Delaware commutes, but against the lived experience of the 38 million Americans who still depend on SNAP to feed themselves and their children in a country that just spent $101 million so their president could play golf.
Editorial Conclusion
A president who has spent $101.2 million of taxpayer money on personal golf trips — while stripping 4.3 million Americans of food assistance, slashing nutrition programs for children and seniors, and delivering the most dramatic upward redistribution of wealth in modern history — has not lost his way. He has chosen his way, deliberately and at every turn. The 25th Amendment exists for precisely this category of presidential failure: not merely scandal, but abandonment of duty. The constitutional mechanism is clear. The political will, as yet, is not. But the democratic stakes of continued inaction are not abstract. Every round of golf played at public expense while a child loses a food stamp is a statement of national values — and it is a statement this republic cannot afford to let stand unchallenged.
Sources & References
- HuffPost — “Taxpayers’ Tab for Donald Trump’s Golf Habit Crosses $100 Million” (March 28, 2026)
- HuffPost — “Second-Term Tab For Trump’s Golf Hobby Tops $70 Million, On Track To Exceed $300 Million” (November 26, 2025)
- HuffPost — “Taxpayers Have Now Spent More Than $26 Million for Trump’s Second-Term Golf” (April 7, 2025)
- HuffPost — “Trump’s Golf Weekends’ Cost to Taxpayers Hits $18.2 Million” (March 17, 2025)
- Government Accountability Office — 2019 Report on Presidential Travel Costs to Mar-a-Lago
- CNN — “Donald Trump’s Huge Golf Hypocrisy” (January 3, 2018)
- CNN — “Fact Check: Trump Has Spent Far More Time at Golf Clubs Than Obama” (May 25, 2020)
- AP / FOX 5 — “Nearly 4.3 Million Americans Lost SNAP Benefits” (May 3, 2026)
- Common Dreams — “4.3 Million Off SNAP and Counting: Trump Official Celebrates Mass Loss of Food Aid” (May 4, 2026)
- NationofChange — “Millions Lose Food Aid as Trump’s Budget Law Reshapes SNAP” (April 9, 2026)
- Food Research & Action Center — “A Deliberate Policy Design for Decline in SNAP Participation” (April 2026)
- Food Research & Action Center — “SNAP Cuts in OBBBA/H.R. 1: Billionaires Win, Working Families Lose” (November 2025)
- Food Research & Action Center — “Trump Administration’s FY 2026 Budget Proposal: A Step Backward in the Fight Against Poverty” (June 2025)
- Congressman John Larson — “Larson Files Articles of Impeachment, Calls for 25th Amendment” (April 2026)
- NBC Washington — “What Is the 25th Amendment? Calls Grow for It to Be Invoked Against Trump” (April 2026)
- TIME — “What to Know About the 25th Amendment as Lawmakers Call for Trump’s Removal” (April 2026)
- Common Cause — “Trump Is Unfit to Serve: Common Cause Calls on Cabinet to Invoke the 25th Amendment” (April 2026)
- International Bar Association — “Comment and Analysis: President Trump and the 25th Amendment” (2026)
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